(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photo courtesy of NOS)
 Former National Team-player/Commentator Hugo Walker passed away
Nederlands
IN MEMORIAM 
...Hugo Walker...
(1933 - 2015)
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 AMSTERDAM (Neth.) -
Hugo Walker, who for many years was a beloved and well-respected commentator for NOS Studio Sport, passed away early Friday-morning, March 27 at the age of 81.
Hugo Walker was born on August 3, 1933 in Amsterdam.
He became a very talented athlete, playing both baseball and soccer.
Walker played one official game in the main soccer squad of Ajax in the Honor Division.
As a first baseman, Walker played many seasons for Amsterdam-based Ajax, VVGA and ABC.
In baseball, Walker played several seasons in the highest Dutch league.
He had made his debut in the big league in the fifties while playing for Ajax.
Walker last played in the Dutch big league in the 1967 season at age 33 when he was with ABC.
In 1958, he was first selected for the Netherlands Baseball Team, which then played an exhibition intersquad game.
Four years later, in 1962, Walker captured the European title with the Orange squad at the European Championship in front of a home crowd in Dutch capital Amsterdam.
In 1968, he became a commentator for Sport in Beeld, which was the predecessor of NOS Studio Sport, the leading and most successful sports-show on Dutch national television since it was first broadcast in 1959.
Walker also did commentary for the Radio-show Langs de Lijn.
At Studio Sport, Walker became one of the best-known commentators in the seventies through nineties.
He covered soccer, but also baseball, including the Haarlem Baseball Week, World Port Tournaments, European Championships and in 1986 the first of three World Championships that were organized in the Netherlands.
As a soccer-commentator, he not only covered major games in the Dutch competition, but also was assigned to cover European Championships and World Championships.
While doing his work as commentator, he always showed up prepared and worked closely and with pleasure together with persons who assisted him and with the crew during (live) registrations.
In his career as soccer-commentator, Walker got famous thanks to his voice and way of announcing, which led to the creation of his own fanclub.
Walker left Studio Sport in 2000, then worked briefly for the commercial channel RTL.
Besides working as commentator, Walker worked in advertisements and for a long time was the commercial director of Adformatie, a magazine for the advertisement business of which he was of the founders.
The webmaster of Grand Slam * Stats & News offers his condolences to Hugo's wife Truus, his sons and other family members and wishes them a lot of strength with this big loss.
(March 27)
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